Semiconductor devices are used extensively in various electronic and other devices throughout the world. Semiconductor devices, typically formed as integrated circuits and also known as chips, are fabricated on substrates and each substrate includes hundreds or even thousands of chips. In today's semiconductor manufacturing industry, there is a constant drive to increase substrate sizes thereby increasing the number of chips that can be formed on a substrate. Each substrate undergoes processing through multiple processing operations using multiple manufacturing tools and the use of larger substrates enables a greater number of chips to be processed in a single processing operation. As substrates sizes continue to increase to allow a greater number of chips to be formed on a substrate, however, the equipment that processes the substrates must be scaled accordingly.
One limitation in processing increasingly larger substrates is the physical size limitation in manufacturing larger processing tools. Another limitation is in uniformity of the conditions producible throughout a processing chamber. Non-uniformities are introduced when equipment is manufactured past a critical uniformity state. For one example, in an ion implantation manufacturing tool, there are limitations in the size, i.e. footprint, of an ion beam that can be uniform throughout the footprint. For another example, in an etching tool, there are limitations in the uniformity of the electric field and the plasma that can be achieved across an increasingly large processing chamber sized to accommodate increasingly larger substrates.
There is also a drive to increase throughput, i.e. the number of chips that can be processed in a given time period. In view of the limitations in manufacturing larger processing tools with acceptable processing uniformities, innovative ways for processing large numbers of increasingly larger substrates through manufacturable processing tools, are needed.